Last checked October 6, 2026 against the public pages listed under Sources. Each statement about Cloudflare Stream describes what those pages say on that date and goes no further; products and prices change, so if anything here is out of date, please tell us and we will correct it. Cloudflare and Cloudflare Stream are trademarks of Cloudflare, Inc.; Video Piper is not affiliated with Cloudflare.
At a glance
| Capability | Video Piper | What Cloudflare's docs say |
|---|---|---|
| On-demand encoding | H.264 and AAC MP4 on every plan, plus HLS on Pro and Scale. | H.264 with adaptive bitrate streaming, "supporting resolutions from 360p to 1080p." |
| Uploads | Multipart uploads, URL import and upload while recording; up to 8 hours and 20 GiB per upload by default. | Up to 30 GB per upload by default; direct creator uploads by basic POST or the tus protocol. |
| Trim and clip | Frame-accurate trim applied during the encode, with no extra processing time. | A clip API that takes start and end times in seconds from an existing video and creates a new video. |
| Captions | Speech to text on Pro and Scale: WebVTT, SRT and plain text. | AI-generated captions in 12 languages, or upload your own caption file. |
| Playback security | Signed links and up to 20 allowed domains. Not DRM. | Signed URLs with expiry and access rules by IP range or country, up to 1,000 signing keys, and allowed origins per video. |
| Streaming formats | HLS (CMAF) on Pro and Scale; MP4 on every plan. | Playback with any HLS or DASH compatible player. |
| Live streaming | Not offered through the API. | RTMPS or SRT ingest, with every live stream recorded automatically. |
| Viewer analytics | Not offered. Usage is metered for billing only. | Analytics in the dashboard or through a GraphQL API. |
What Video Piper offers
- Editing as API calls. A frame-accurate trim during the encode, and edits that build one new video from up to 50 clips of your finished videos, with hard cuts, crossfades or fades through black.
- Redaction. On Pro and Scale, blur or black out up to 20 rectangular or oval regions per video, each for its own time window, with keyframes for moving subjects.
- Recorder and editor components.
<video-piper-recorder>records the screen, the camera or both with upload while recording (Pro and Scale), and<video-piper-editor>embeds a timeline editor; both are authorised with one-use tokens from your server. - Up to 4K output on Pro and Scale, with every lower quality level made too.
What Cloudflare Stream documents
- Live streaming. Creators broadcast "over either RTMPS or SRT", and "All Stream Live videos are automatically recorded." The docs also cover sub-second latency streaming and playback with WebRTC (WHIP and WHEP), DVR for live, and simulcasting to third-party platforms.
- Delivery on Cloudflare's network, which it says runs in hundreds of cities worldwide, with bandwidth included in delivered minutes and "no additional egress" fees. For millions of minutes a month it points to its sales team for volume pricing.
- A player for on-demand and live video, also available as React and Angular components, with VAST tags for ads, plus guides for playback in native iOS and Android apps.
- Media Transformations to optimize and manipulate videos stored outside Stream, such as resizing them or generating still frames.
- Other features in its docs include watermarks, additional audio tracks and MP4 downloads.
Where Video Piper falls short
Video Piper's API is for on-demand video: it does not offer live streaming, it does not provide viewer analytics, it does not offer DRM (playback links are signed and domain-limited, which is not DRM), and it produces H.264 and AAC output only. If any of those is a requirement, choose a service that documents it.
How pricing differs
Cloudflare Stream bills on two dimensions. Storage is prepaid "in increments of $5 per month for each 1,000 minutes of video storage capacity", and delivery is post-paid at $1 per 1,000 minutes delivered. "Ingress (sending your content to us) and encoding are always free." Media Transformations cost $0.50 per 1,000 monthly unique transformation operations, with 5,000 free each month.
Video Piper sells monthly plans: Free ($0, 30 processing minutes, up to 720p), Starter ($49, 400 minutes, up to 1080p), Pro ($199, 1,500 minutes, up to 4K) and Scale ($699, 6,000 minutes, up to 4K), each with included storage and delivery. Beyond a paid plan, usage is $0.09 per processing minute, $0.15 per GB-month of storage and $0.55 per GB of delivery. Captions cost 2 extra processing minutes per captioned minute.
One charges by minutes stored and delivered; the other by processing minutes, GB stored and GB delivered. How they compare depends on how long your library is and how often it is watched, so we do not give a single figure.
Which should you choose?
If you need live streaming, WebRTC, DASH or an analytics API, Cloudflare documents them and Video Piper does not offer live streaming or viewer analytics. If you need frame-accurate editing and redaction as API calls, or recording and editing components for your own site, that is what Video Piper is built around. The free plan is the quickest way to test.
Sources
Read on October 6, 2026. Figures are those shown on each page on that date and may have changed.
- Overview: developers.cloudflare.com/stream
- Pricing: developers.cloudflare.com/stream/pricing
- FAQ (upload limits): developers.cloudflare.com/stream/faq
- Uploads: developers.cloudflare.com/stream/uploading-videos/direct-creator-uploads
- Clipping: developers.cloudflare.com/stream/edit-videos/video-clipping
- Captions: developers.cloudflare.com/stream/edit-videos/adding-captions
- Securing streams: developers.cloudflare.com/stream/viewing-videos/securing-your-stream
- Live streaming: developers.cloudflare.com/stream/stream-live
- Players: using-the-stream-player and using-own-player
- Media Transformations: developers.cloudflare.com/stream/transform-videos
- Page index (WebRTC, DVR, simulcast, analytics, watermarks, audio tracks): developers.cloudflare.com/stream/llms.txt
- Video Piper claims: this site's pricing and documentation.
Frequently asked questions
What does Cloudflare Stream document that Video Piper does not offer?
Cloudflare's Stream documentation describes live input over RTMPS or SRT with automatic recording, sub-second WebRTC streaming and playback, DVR and simulcasting, a GraphQL analytics API, and DASH as well as HLS playback. Video Piper does not offer live streaming through its API or viewer analytics.
Can my users upload directly to each service?
Cloudflare documents direct creator uploads, which let users in your app upload videos directly to Stream with a unique, one-time upload URL. Video Piper uses one-video upload tokens, and its recorder component can record the screen or camera and upload while recording on Pro and Scale.
How do the pricing models differ?
Cloudflare's pricing page lists storage at $5 per month for each 1,000 minutes of capacity and delivery at $1 per 1,000 minutes, with ingress and encoding free. Video Piper sells monthly plans with included processing minutes, storage and delivery, and bills overage at published rates.